20 Million Miles to Earth

1957 science fiction monster movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Following an expedition to Venus (which as all you astronomers know is 20 million miles away from earth), astronauts crash land off the coast of Sicily. Some fishermen and an annoying little boy come to the rescue, but all but one of the astronauts perish. That lone survivor manages to escape with only a scratch on his arm. Later, the annoying little boy discovers a giant (plastic?) tube of green slime. He does the smart thing--opens it, plays with it, and sells it to an old man with lots of cages. Havoc ensues when the Venus creature begins to rapidly grow and threaten to destroy Rome. Oh, snap!

Hokey dialogue, very obvious blue/green screen effects, an incomprehensible disregard for science (and common sense), and a plot parallel to King Kong in far too many ways. . .all overshadowed by the awesome stop-motion effects of Harryhausen as the giant lizard thing busts through walls and bridges and wrestles with people and elephants. Sure, I'll continue preaching that special effects can not make a bad movie good. I can live being Mr. Double-Standard. I'll take these stop-animation effects over CGI and other modern tricks any day! My biggest gripe: My hope that the monster would fight Chuck Norris near the end of the movie left me slightly disappointed. Was that a faux-Wilhelm in there? Fun, fun movie.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2007 thriller

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Hank's a divorcee struggling with making ends meet and unable to pay a nagging ex-wife child support. When he's approached by his older brother Andy regarding the robbery of a mom and pop jewelry store in the suburbs, he decides to hop on board. When the mom and pop turn out to be the brothers' actual mom and pop, the robbery threatens to tear apart the family. Things don't go as expected. Oh, snap! Etc.

I did like the narrative structure (non-chronological, different perspectives, overlapping scenes) and I liked the general story. It's the finer details that are flimsy, and the far-too-many unresolved moments leave the unimaginative flaccid. And the acting is close to terrible with Ethan Hawke scene chewing, Philip Hoffman acting all Philip Hoffman, Marisa Tomei looking completely lost, and Albert Finney giving the type of performance that made me wonder if he was in the middle of having a stroke. There's nothing that gives this any flare, and although it consistently succeeds in creating tension, the resolution makes it all seem like a waste of time. It's not bad, but it seems like it's all been seen before. But how about Marisa Tomei's nipples? Is there an Academy Award for nipples? If not, somebody should get on that.

Tokyo Drifter

1966 yakuza b-movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Powder-blue suited Tetsu follows his boss into the straight life but meets obstacles everywhere he steps, namely an old rival gang. Oh, snap! He decides to drift, leaving his girlfriend and his father figure of a boss behind. Then things get complicated.

Suzuki was fired by his studio for making "incomprehensible" movies. This incomprehensible movie's got lots of stylized action and a genius eye for color, stuff that could make Tarantino stick his hand down the front of his pants never to be seen again. The soundtrack, which apparently consists of a single song, is oppressive, but with a wry humor and unique vision, this thing's really fun to watch. Loved the loads of goofiness in that climactic dance club scene. I do prefer Branded to Kill though.

A Hard Day's Night

1964 musical comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Four members of a hippie band run around with the grandfather of the bassist and make mischief. The one with the big nose turns up missing right before a big show. Oh, snap!

It's a breath of fresh air. Most amazing is that it doesn't seem dated to me. It's not quite a modern music video like the kids are all watching on the MTV7 (although honestly, I've not seen a modern musical video in maybe 10 years), but the world would probably be a lot better if it was. It's an hour and a half of exhilarating cheekiness. The Beatles are all good actors most of the time, and there's a natural fun in Richard Lester's almost freeform direction. Non-sequiturs a-go-go! Is it better than Yellow Submarine though?

South Park: Bigger, Louder, Uncut

1999 animated comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A raunchy movie's foul language corrupts the youth of America. Mothers fight back by putting a series of events in motion that lead to America declaring war on Canada. Meanwhile, Satan and Saddam Hussein await the final sign of the apocalypse so that they can rule the world together. Oh, snap! The South Park children (minus the one that always dies) have to act fast to save the world from Satan. And censorship!

A lot of this is timeless satire although this movie won't ultimately have the staying power of a Duck Soup or Weekend at Bernie's II. I prefer Parker and Stone's Team America, a movie I've yet to find another fan of. There are lots of clever moments and tons of really stupid ones in this, but nobody can deny that the songs are genius. I won't be able to get "Uncle F*cker" out of my head for weeks.

I own this movie. What I really wanted to watch wouldn't work on the laptop. Not that I'm making excuses.

Valdez Is Coming

1971 western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A lynch mob surrounds an interracial couple and Bob Valdez, a sheriff who is actually attempting to bring the conflict to a resolution via words instead of bullets, ends up shooting the husband in self-defense. After finding out that this black man was wrongly accused anyway, Valdez attempts to gather some funds to give to the widow. Tanner, the cat who wants to marry the woman who was married to the man who was killed by somebody who was not that black guy who Valdez killed (Oh, snap!), rejects Valdez's plea for 100 dollars. Tanner and his men actually humiliate and torture Valdez instead. Our hero find that he must resort to violence and kidnapping to get what he wants.

Burt Lancaster is a real presence in this. Valdez Is Coming is far from perfect, but it is very entertaining and contains a really great (maybe frustratingly great) ending. But it's really Lancaster's movie, and he makes a better Mexican than even Charlton Heston! A bit of an atypical, oddball western, but definitely one worth seeing.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door

1973 sociopolitical action flick

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Dan Freeman becomes the CIA's first black agent by mixing an Uncle Tom 'tude, his natural athletic ability, his intelligence, and more than a little hard work. Little do they-who-sort-of-wanted-integration know, Freeman was simply absorbing the training so that he could train young angry black men and put a little scare into whitey. Oh, snap! It's war!

Well, it's a conversation starter, I guess. Not a very slick production and far too much talking for an action movie, but it's still a fascinating thing to watch. There's such a hostility. I bet this was absolutely terrifying to white American upon its release. I liked the parallels between Freeman's training and his subsequent training of his own "agents," and I did think some of the action scenes were well filmed, especially given what must have been a B-movie budget. Editing was needed though as some of the scenes were superfluous and a lot of the character development completely pointless. If this movie had Dolemite in it, by the way, it would have been one of the best movies of the 70's!

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

1971 anti-western

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An ambitious businessman moves into a growing town in the American Northwest with the hopes of opening up his own brothel/gambling facility/eatery. A high-class and business-savvy prostitute comes along and makes him a proposition. Together, they open up and operate the finest house o' whores (The International House of Whores) them parts had ever seen. All's good until Wal-mart sends some of its thugs to buy out McCabe. After they make him a few offers that he can refuse, they move on to Plan B that involves sending a halfbreed in a goatskin coat, a giant, and a kid to kill him. Oh, snap!

Love this movie. The Cohen soundtrack (really, just three repeated songs), the poetic violence, the writing, the acting, the continually evolving set (the town was built as they filmed), the atmosphere. It's all great. There are only a few movies I can think of that have such a consistent tone--the colors, the impending sense of doom, a damp heaviness. I'm reminded of last year's There Will Be Blood actually, both with that consistent tone and the themes involving business, religion, and drinking milkshakes. Both Warren Beatty and Julie Christie were great, but I also love all the typical fringe characters who brought nuances and texture to the little brown town. As expected, Altman drops the American western on its head, and the result is something that left me speechless. Knowing Altman can do no wrong, I think I need to give second chances to Brewster McCloud and maybe Gosford Park.

Bound

1996 lesbian thriller

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Following her release from a prison sentence, lesbian Corky gets a job as a maintenance lesbian in building. She meets lesbian Violet, the wife of a mafia guy. They concoct a plan to steal 2 million dollars in mafia money, but not before they engage in lots and lots of lesbianism.

Wachowski Brothers' first flick certainly has some neat gimmicks but suffers from having the general generic feel and look of an after-school special. A really graphic after-school special. There are moments that are bearable, but the acting of Jennifer Tilly is simply unbearable. Lots of unintentionally funny moments apparently result when you give Jennifer Tilly really bad lines to read. Gina Gershon isn't much better, and I suspect most of the problem is that the dialogue is so terribly written. Joe Pantoliano is pretty Joe Pantolianoish and as entertaining as he usually is, but there's so much dopeyness around him. It doesn't help that the whole thing looks like an excuse to show some cheap lesbian action. It's better than that last Matrix movie though.

La Constellation Jodorowsky

1994 documentary

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Interviews and career synopsis of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Some fascinating tidbits and footage, especially the scenes from the "Panic Movement" stuff and the artwork for the abandoned Dune project. The documentary, unfortunately, is a real mess from the get-go and really takes a self-indulgent turn at the 3/4 mark and spirals aimlessly for what seems to be 2 and 1/2 hours before thankfully ending. Any interview/documentary that starts with the subject being asked "Who are you?" is bound to be pretentious although there's a definite fanboy idol worship going on with filmmaker Louis Mouchet. Nothing all that revealing, but it's an ok introduction to Jodorowsky.

Capturing the Friedmans

2003 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A seemingly normal Jewish family near Long Island is torn apart by revelations of the father's pedophilia and accusations that both the father and the youngest son molested young boys during a computer class the former taught. Personal and more-than-slightly creepy home footage and interviews with slimy lawyers, vindictive judges, buffoonish detectives, and confused alleged victims are used to try to piece together the story of a family that nothing could ever piece together again.

Troubling stuff nearly jerked out the tears even though the direction (by the guy who invented Moviefone, by the way) is at times overly sentimental and contriving. Almost every ounce of this reality show is difficult to watch, but it is a fascinating glimpse at how quickly things can fall apart, how quickly fingers can be pointed, and how quickly folks can hop aboard the witch hunt bandwagon. Stuffed with unanswered questions, Capturing the Friedmans oozes despair. It's something I probably want to forget about but doubt I ever will.

The Fountain

2006 dramatic drivel

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A triad of stories! There's a bald guy having sex with a tree in a floating snow globe. There's the same guy (with hair though) researching a cure for cancer by cutting open as many monkeys as he can find while his author wife dies of cancer. And there's the story in that wife's book about some Spaniards who go searching for the Tree of Life. Ah, man, I think he just ate his girlfriend! Oh, snap! This monkey's gone to heaven!

Overly ambitious and ultimately really really pretentious stuff from the guy who brought us the interesting Pi and the abysmal Requiem for a Dream. I will say that I liked Hugh Jackman a lot in this. Not so much any of the other performances, and I even thought Rachel Weisz was borderline terrible. I didn't like the look of the movie at all. One word: slick. Everything looked artificial and computery, and at one point I thought for sure that I was watching a Smashing Pumpkins video instead of a movie. The dialogue, while an attempt for the cryptic and poetic, is strangely insipid. This is the kind of movie that makes its point with an ironing board, and I had to get a towel to wipe off all the pretension from the screen after it was over. It's really too bad. It seemed like a lot of love and hard work went into this.

What's New, Pussycat?

1965 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Michael, a hedonist, wants to settle down and live faithfully ever after with Carole. He finds it nearly impossible since every woman seems to fall for him. Oh, snap! His psychiatrist, a womanizer himself, isn't much help either.

Whoa-a-whoa-a-whoa. This movie sucks.

The Forbidden Kingdom

2008 martial arts movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A wimpy kung-fu film aficionado finds a nifty bowstaff in a Chinatown pawn shop. On the way home, some thugs stop him and nearly kill him. Suddenly, he is transported into China's distant past where he has to find a stone monkey king and give him back his staff. He gets help from a random teenage girl, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li, all who should have found something better to do with their time.

Well, that didn't work. What a loud, obnoxious movie this is. I think the biggest problem with this--a problem contributing to terrible dialogue, stupid computer effects, and this goody-goody lack of depth--is that it's far more American than it is Asian. Despite the appeal (I guess) of Jet Li and Jackie Chan kicking each other and Wu-Ping Yuen fight choreography, the action scenes are really nothing to get excited about. In fact, they're a little boring at times, and the wire work looks really clumsy and inappropriate. Straight outta the junk drawer!

Trafic

1971 French comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Mr. Hulot is traveling to Amsterdam with a couple associates to show off a funky recreational vehicle at a gigantic car show. Unfortunately for him, trafic [sic] jams, accidents, the po-po, and general silliness get in his way. How do you say "Oh, snap!" in French?

Tati's last film isn't his best film, but it definitely has its share of zany, entertaining moments. So much of the movie lags, and whereas those lags generally build up to something great in Playtime, they often go nowhere at all here. At time, this moves as quickly as the trafic [sic] jams Hulot finds himself in. The final shot is great, and there are lots of other slowly-unfolding bits of brilliance. One complaint would be that there's just too much talking in this. As expected, not a lot to laugh out loud at, but there's still enough sweetly entertaining here to make it well worth seeing. On par with Mon Oncle if not as brilliant as Playtime or M. Hulot's Holiday.